Principales herramientas moleculares empleadas en la ciencia animal

The animal domestication and livestock activities are developed by man since about 10,000 years ago, which has led to a staggering number of animal breeds and attributes, which have covered part of the need food, cultural and utility of man. With development of genetics and molecular biology in the XX century, has been made to optimized many of these ancient practices. The progress of techniques such as PCR, detection of molecular markers, sequencing of DNA, RNA and proteins, and bioinformatics tools, have allowed to know the constitution and organization of the genome of many species, its variation, genotype-phenotype relationship, gene expression and metabolism. In addition, these advances have perfected techniques in animal science, such as diagnosis of diseases and zoonoses, assisted selection, breeding, reproduction, the study of genetic diversity, animal nutrition and the development of production technologies. Although many of the methods of management and traditional breeding may not be replaced, it is necessary to include new molecular techniques, therefore the present review describes the main technologies applied in this area, demonstrating how the use of molecular tools is increasingly more necessary in technical and economic terms.